Visiting Research Fellow 2013, Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe", Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum

Christoph Anderl studied Sinology and Japanology at the University of Vienna (M.A. 1995), as well as East Asian linguistics at the University of Oslo (Ph.D. 2005). While finishing his Ph.D., he was a research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala, affiliated with Uppsala University). From 2006 to 2010, he joined the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, in the beginning as a research assistant and lecturer, and later as a senior research fellow and project leader. From 2010-2013, he joined the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-University Bochum as a postdoctoral researcher working on the Mercator-funded project “Dynamics of Text Corpora and Image Programs: Representations of Buddhist Narratives along the Silk Road”. Moreover, he has worked at Ghent University as guest professor for East Asian linguistics from 2010

Christoph Anderl specializes in Chinese Buddhism with an emphasis on Dūnhuáng manuscripts and medieval Chán Buddhism, but he is also interested in Buddhist iconography in Central Asia and China, and the relationship between text and image in East Asian Buddhism in general. Linguistically, he is interested in Buddhist Hybrid Chinese syntax and semantics, late medieval Chinese and Buddhist medieval lexicography and paleography. Among many publications, his latest include Digital Texts and Digital Resources (special monograph issue of the Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal vol. 25, 2012; edited together with Marcus Bingenheimer and Christian Wittern) and the edited volume Zen Buddhist Rhetoric in China, Korea and Japan (Conceptual History and Chinese Linguistics vol. 3, 2012). He is also the author of Studies in the Language of Zǔ-táng jí, a grammar of early vernacular Chinese (two volumes, 2004).

During his fellowship with us, he will investigate a project entitled ‘Buddhist Narratives in Central Asia and China’.